Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), has refuted a report from the New York Times that claimed he planned to lay off Twitter staff at a date earlier than November 1 in order to dodge stock grants that were due on that day.
Musk wrote the following in response to a user on Twitter (Twitter stock) who asked about the layoffs: “This is incorrect.”
The New York Times reported on Saturday that Elon Musk has ordered job cuts across the company, with some teams to be trimmed more than others and that layoffs would take place before the date of November 1, when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation. This information was published on the website of The New York Times.
According to a report in the Times, the layoffs might start as soon as this coming Saturday, citing unnamed sources who are acquainted with the situation.
On Saturday, various news outlets reported that Elon Musk had sacked top executives in an effort to save money on large severance payments and that he was also planning to lay off further workers as soon as Saturday.
Following the completion of a high-profile $44 billion buyout of the social media platform on Thursday, Musk fired Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, according to people familiar with the situation quoted by Reuters.
He claimed that they had misled him as well as other investors on Twitter, about the number of false accounts that existed on the platform. According to the findings of the research company Equilar, the executives were potentially eligible to earn separation payouts amounting to almost $122 million.
According to a report in The Information that cited unnamed people familiar with the situation, Elon Musk fired four top Twitter executives, including Agrawal and Segal, citing “cause,” in an apparent effort to avoid severance pay and unvested stock awards. The report cited unidentified people as its sources.
Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed, alleged on Saturday that Elon Musk removed top Twitter executives “for a reason,” which prevented their unvested stock from vesting as part of a change of ownership. Greenfield made his statement in a tweet.
Courtney Yu, director of research at Equilar, told Reuters on Friday that the fired executives “should be getting these (severance) payments unless Elon Musk had cause for termination, with the cause in these cases typically being that they broke the law or violated company policy.” Elon Musk is the founder and CEO of Tesla, which is a privately held electric car company.
Twitter stock was trading at $53.70. Recently, GM temporarily suspends advertising on Twitter following Musk takeover. According to a new filing that was made with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the delisting of TWTR stock from the New York Stock Exchange is scheduled to take place on November 8.
Featured Image- Unsplash @ Alexander Shatov
Author Valerie Remorosa 
